11-13-2013, 10:52 AM
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#49
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Rookie
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Re: AD Mode in '13
McKinley Cash sent me the link to this topic from another one that I had started. This one seems to be much more lively so I'll post my thoughts here -
My "Be an Athletic Director" mode:
You get to pick a school (perhaps even do it like coaching carousel, where you can start at your favorite school or try to work your way up from a one-star program) and you're in charge of all of the big things for the program - The stadium maintenance/upgrading/improvement, negotiating OOC games with other big programs (I'll expand on this below), raising funds to maintain your number of scholarships or upgrade equipment or practice facilities, hire better/the best coaches, etc, etc.
This mode would give you control over more of the "My School" grades that effect recruiting. As an AD it would be your job to maintain or improve all of those grades, from the ones that make immediate sense for football (Facilities, Conference Prestige, Coach Experience, Program Stability, etc) to the ones that you'd need to do some RPG type activities to improve (Campus Lifestyle - schedule pep rallies? make players do community service?; Academic Prestige - make enough money to give surplus funds to another department?; etc).
There are so many possibilities here... think about scheduling games as it is in NCAA '14. This one is just a lifeless feature when in real life this is a major part of an AD's job. You can't be a 1-star program and just schedule the #1 team in the country to play at YOUR field. You probably wouldn't even get them to give you a 2-1 or 3-1 deal. They'd probably insist that you play at a neutral site close to their campus and try to call that the home game in a 2-1 or 3-1 deal. Most 1-star schools take big payments to go get creamed at big program home openers.
How about conference realignment and the politics involved there? You're part of the MAC and there are rumors that a couple of teams are leaving for the American Athletic Conference... if they do, some bowl tie-ins might go away, your conference prestige could go down, you might have players leave or recruits not consider going to your school. What do you do? Do you try to jump ship first? Do you try to convince those schools to stay? What have you done to make your program more attractive to an AQ conference?
What about the other side of Coaching Carousel? Your 1-star program just won its first Conference Championship... you're getting accolades, pats on the back, more boosters are donating... and then BAM! Not only are your top players declaring for the NFL, your coach is now considering offers from bigger programs. What do you do? Do you have enough money to keep him? Have you made improvements to your facilities to make his life easier? No? He's gone. Good luck finding the next new coach.
Which brings me to upgrading/expanding facilities/stadiums. There's already features in the game for building stadiums... why not put a dollar sign on each one of those improvements and make it a feature in dynasty mode? This is a huge part of the college game and conference politics. When I was a freshman (way back in 1998) at Tech, Lane Stadium was a shadow of what it is today. They've completely redone the place - built a whole new press box with expanded suites, built a whole new section (check NCAA 2003 to see Lane Stadium without the South Endzone Expansion), new scoreboards, etc. This could be a great feature to add into the game if you're trying to take your 1-star program to a better conference. The B1G isn't going to invite a program with a stadium that seats less than 40,000... it's never going to happen. Moving a team there in the current Conference Editor, even if you've improved the "program prestige" to a 4/5/6 star level, is completely unrealistic if the rest of the program hasn't improved as well. It's not all on-the-field success that determines these things.
Would be freaken sweet if they did even half of this.
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